B 


UC-NRLF 


GIFT  or       . 


THE 
HOPE    OF    IMMORTALITY 

OUR  REASONS  FOR  IT 

BY 

CHARLES   FLETCHER   DOLE 

AUTHOR   OF    UTHB    COMING    PEOPLE,"   "  THEOLOGY 

OP   CIVILIZATION,"     "THE    RELIGION   OP 

A    GENTLEMAN,"    ETC. 


NEW   YORK 

THOMAS  Y.   CEOWELL  &  CO. 

PUBLISHERS 


3>L 


cv 


w 


Copyright,  1906,  1908 
By  THOMAS  Y.  CEOWELL  &  CO. 


PREFACE 

I  have  undertaken  in  the  following  pages  to  state  as 
simply  as  possible  the  reasons  that  urge  me  to  a  belief 
in  the  reality  of  the  immortal  life.  It  may  be  of  in- 
terest to  readers  if  I  say  a  few  words  at  the  beginning 
about  the  "  personal  equation  "  in  my  own  case.  It  has 
always  been  extremely  easy  for  me  to  see  the  difficul- 
ties that  arise  in  the  way  of  a  belief  in  immortality. 
I  have  taken  pains  never  to  escape  the  sight  of  these 
difficulties,  but  rather  to  seek  them  out  and  measure 
them  at  their  full  value.  I  am  unhappy  if  I  have  an 
intimation  that  there  lies  somewhere  any  formidable 
consideration,  with  which  I  am  not  familiar,  touching 
an  important  subject.  I  hold  that  no  man  knows  one 
side  or  aspect  of  a  question,  unless  he  knows  its  other 
sides  also. 

Moreover,  perhaps  by  some  fault  of  temperament,  I  do 
not  happen  to  have  the  intense  yearning  that  many  pro- 
fess for  an  endless  existence.  I  feel  about  a  future  life 
as  one  might  feel  in  regard  to  setting  forth  upon  an  un- 
tried voyage ;  for  example,  to  some  distant  star.  So  far 
as  I  have  confidence  that  I  am  a  citizen  of  a  rational  uni- 
verse, I  can  conceive  that  the  unknown  voyage  will  be 
worth  all  the  trouble  it  may  cost.  The  venture  stirs  my 
interest.  But  otherwise,  I  have  little  sense  of  clinging 
to  life,  merely  in  order  to  live.  Thus,  though  I  heartily 
enjoy  life,  "  taking  it  all  in  all/'  yet  I  have  no  eager  de- 
sire to  live  however  comfortably  to  great  age,  and  I 
should  distinctly  deprecate  for  myself  or  for  others 
the  fulfilment   of    a  certain   noted  Kussian   biologist's 


fif\/kA  O/l 


IV  PREFACE 

prophecy  that  mankind  may  learn  to  extend  the  average 
lifetime  to  a  hundred  and  fifty  years ! 

So  far,  then,  as  I  feel  desire  for  life,  the  desire  is  that 
my  life  may  count  for  something,  and  have  use  or  value. 
Why  should  any  one  care  to  have  existence  at  all,  unless 
his  life  contributes  in  some  way  to  the  sum  of  the  worth 
of  the  universe  ?  Life,  now  and  here,  interests  me,  be- 
cause it  is  social ;  that  is,  we  are  each  able  to  serve,  help, 
and  enrich  one  another,  and  to  increase  the  total  wealth 
and  welfare  of  humanity.  It  is  only  on  some  such  terms 
as  these  that  life  seems  worth  living  anywhere. 

I  have  asked  myself  whether  I  would  not  be  content 
if  I  might  in  some  way  pass  over  into  that  "  immortality 
of  influence  "  of  which  we  sometimes  hear.  I  think  that 
I  could  be  content,  provided  this  were  the  best  use  to 
which  I  could  be  put,  and  provided  this  influence  itself 
were  more  than  a  breath  destined  to  pass  away  forever 
as  soon  as  our  tiny  planet  cools  away.  In  other  words, 
we  can  bear  death,  for  ourselves,  if  we  are  not  wanted 
anywhere.  But  we  do  wish  to  be  able  to  respect  the 
world  we  live  in,  and  we  could  hardly  respect  a  universe 
that  created  a  Socrates,  a  Michael  Angelo,  or  an  Epicte- 
tus  only  to  destroy  him,  as  the  early  gods  are  reputed  to 
have  devoured  their  own  offspring. 

This  brings  me  frankly  to  confess  to  a  certain  bias.  I 
own  that  the  more  I  know  about  life,  the  more  I  desire 
to  discover  rationality  in  it.  I  had  rather  be  a  citizen 
for  even  a  brief  period  in  a  significant  and  intelligent 
world  than  to  live  forever  in  a  meaningless  world.  I 
had  rather  be  able  to  look  out  for  one  day  on  the  possi- 
bilities of  an  infinite  universe  than  to  possess  millenniums 
circumscribed  within  bounds  of  time  and  place.  I  can- 
not help  this  kind  of  bias.     It  seems  to  be  involved  in 


PREFACE  V 

the  nature  of  mind.  Other  men  gladly  make  the  same 
confession.  Here  is  one  of  the  facts  of  human  nature 
that  thought  has  to  reckon  with. 

It  is  as  if  there  were  something  in  us,  like  Prometheus 
in  the  ancient  myth,  that  says  in  the  face  of  all  merely 
brute  powers :  Break  us  down  if  you  choose ;  annihilate 
us ;  yet  we  are  more  and  greater  than  you ;  we  defy  you 
to  hurt  us.  For  we  are  the  offspring  of  reason,  and  our 
supreme  desire  is  toward  the  good  and  the  beautiful. 
What  a  marvellous  thing,  on  any  ground,  that  such  a 
conception  has  entered  into  Man's  mind! 

I  have  owned  to  a  certain  bias.  Does  the  fact  of  such 
a  bias  constitute  a  disqualification  against  the  student, 
the  investigator,  or  the  thinker  who  frankly  acknowl- 
edges it  and  makes  allowance  accordingly  ?  I  think  not. 
A  man  consults  a  physician  upon  the  question  of  his 
health.  He  has  a  bias  in  favor  of  being  found  consti- 
tutionally sound.  All  the  more  careful  is  he  to  choose 
an  expert  physician,  who  will  make  no  mistake  even  in 
favor  of  pronouncing  him  well.  He  will  insist  that  his 
physician  shall  tell  him  the  whole  truth. 

In  fact,  the  very  word  "  philosophy  "  implies  a  bias. 
One  of  its  roots  means  love.  The  true  philosopher  loves 
order,  rationality,  beauty,  unity,  goodness.  He  has  a 
faith,  that  is,  a  bias  toward  belief  that  truth  will  be 
found  one  with  the  good.  He  is  all  the  more  bound, 
because  of  this  bias,  to  insist  on  the  whole  truth  and 
nothing  but  the  truth.  Like  the  man  who  ties  his  boat 
to  its  mooring,  he  is  bound  to  test  the  holding  power  of 
his  rope.  If  he  can  break  it,  he  has  no  use  for  it.  So 
the  man  who  loves  truth  is  never  afraid  to  put  it  to  rig- 
orous tests.  If  he  can  break  it  down,  he  has  no  longer 
use  for  it. 


VI  PREFACE 

I  am  aware  that  all  this  involves  a  majestic  assump- 
tion. We  suppose  that  there  is  such  a  reality  as  truth; 
we  suppose  that  we  live  in  a  reasonable  or  logical  world, 
and  that  our  thinking  follows  certain  intellectual  laws. 
We  suppose  that  our  philosophical  bias  in  favor  of  order 
and  unity,  like  our  instinct  toward  food,  is  a  part  of 
the  reality  of  the  world.  We  suppose  that  the  sense 
of  duty  to  follow  truth,  which  honest  men  everywhere 
recognize,  is  also  real.  If  this  is  "  reasoning  in  a  circle," 
it  is  the  only  possible  mode  of  reasoning. 

We  are  able,  however,  to  throw  our  minds  "out  of 
gear,"  and  to  suppose  invalid  our  splendid  assump- 
tion of  a  realm  of  order  and  reality.  We  can  become 
thorough-going  agnostics.  What  happens  now  ?  It  fol- 
lows that  we  have  ceased  for  the  time  to  be  thinkers. 
We  have  got  out  of  the  world  of  logic  into  a  dream 
world  where  no  logic  binds  things  together.  Talk  about 
"  truth  "  as  we  may,  we  cease  to  feel  any  obligations  to 
follow  truth  or  speak  truth.  Terms  and  words  that  had 
meaning  and  value  before,  such  as  right  and  duty,  now 
fade  out  of  sight.  All  that  remains  to  us  is  to  be  ob- 
servers of  sensations.  To  become  thinkers  again  means 
to  take  up  the  old  assumption,  and  to  go  on  again  as  if 
we  belonged  to  the  ideal  realm  of  logic,  order,  beauty, 
truth,  duty,  and  unity. 

Surely  no  one  claims  that  the  attitude  of  intellectual 
agnosticism,  except  as  a  temporary  experiment,  is  whole- 
some or  fruitful.  It  is  like  holding  one's  breath,  —  a 
desirable  power  to  use  on  occasion.  But  the  moral  and 
ideal  life  is  always  surging  in  us  and  compelling  us  to 
breathe.  The  more  deeply  we  breathe,  the  more  fully  we 
live. 


THE   HOPE   OF   IMMORTALITY 

OUR  REASONS  FOR,  IT 


There  are  doubtless  more  people  to-day  than  ever 
before  in  the  history  of  the  world  who  are  in  doubt 
whether  they  have  any  right  to  hope  for  immortality. 
Sometimes,  they  want  so  much  to  believe  as  to  be 
reluctant  to  open  the  question  at  all  or  to  face  any 
facts  which  may  seem  to  militate  against  their  faith. 
Nevertheless,  they  are  not  comfortable  in  this  irrational 
unwillingness  to  think  about  or  discuss  the  greatest  of 
subjects.  Others  have  a  vague  idea  that  the  hope  of 
immortality  is  a  matter  of  sentiment  or  blind  faith,  but 
not  quite  respectable  in  the  realm  of  intelligence.  Even 
high-minded  men  seem  to  feel  that  a  duty  to  truth  may 
compel  them  to  smother  a  natural  longing  in  their  hearts 
to  believe  in  immortality.  They  do  not  fairly  credit  the 
possibility  that  reason,  truth,  and  reality  may  lie  on  the 
side  of  this  hope  and  not  against  it. 

Still  further,  men  are  very  shy  of  the  supposed  teach- 
ings of  science.  They  are  shocked  to  hear  that  certain 
scientific  men  doubt  or  disbelieve  in  immortality.  Thus, 
it  was  remarked  after  a  certain  Ingersoll  Lecture  upon 
Immortality  at  Harvard  University  that  the  faces  of  the 
listeners,  as  they  went  out  of  the  hall,  bore  a  look  of 
sadness,  as  if  they  had  heard  the  death  sentence  pro- 

1 


2   .'    :  .  <  \"&&$r/&0EE.\0ti  'IMMORTALITY 

•  '•     -.••»   *•*.• 

nounced.  Did  these  people  really  expect  that  a  man  of 
science  could  bring  chemical  or  physical  facts  to  throw 
any  light  on  the  problem  of  immortality  ? 

The  fact  is,  that  we  are  all  on  one  level  as  regards  the 
great  questions  that  concern  our  common  humanity. 
The  study  of  ancient  documents,  acquaintance  with 
Greek  or  Hebrew,  familiarity  with  the  terms  of  philoso- 
phy, expert  knowledge  of  soils  or  material  elements, 
no  more  than  high  office  in  church  or  state,  gives  a  man 
special  standing  above  his  fellows  to  tell  them  what  they 
ought  to  do,  or  what  they  must  believe,  or  what  limit 
they  must  set  to  their  ideals  or  their  hopes.  The  ordi- 
nary observer  thousands  of  years  ago  knew  practically 
as  much  as  the  most  learned  physician  knows  to-day 
about  the  fact  of  death.  To  all  visible  appearances  it 
ended  life  then  as  now.  Nevertheless,  in  the  face  of 
all  appearances  to  the  contrary,  hosts  of  people,  both  the 
unlettered  and  the  thoughtful,  have  believed,  and  still 
believe,  that  death  is  not  the  end  of  man.  It  is  possible 
to  trace  the  development  and  the  history  of  the  phases 
of  this  extraordinary  belief.  But  before  the  main  ques- 
tion, whether  or  not  this  vast  trend  of  belief  points  to  a 
reality,  the  expert  man  of  science  only  can  say  as  he  does 
say,  that  if  his  science  gives  him  no  reason  to  urge  in  the 
affirmative,  it  likewise  gives  him  no  knowledge  more  than 
the  rest  of  us  have  to  the  contrary.  The  supreme  con- 
dition for  wise  and  sane  thinking  here  —  the  same 
as  on  every  subject  touching  human  welfare  —  is  the 
fullest  possible  understanding  of  the  facts  that  consti- 
tute and  characterize  human  life,  both  as  it  commonly 
is  and  at  its  highest  and  best.  We  want  also  the  largest 
intellectual  hospitality  and  fearlessness. 

There   are   certain  concessions   which  must  occur  to 


THE  HOPE  OF  IMMORTALITY  3 

every  one  who  begins  to  think  abont  immortality.  Let 
us  range  them  up  in  clear  sight  and  discover  frankly  how 
weighty  they  are.  Doubtless  if  we  knew  nothing  else 
but  these  things,  we  should  not  dream  of  immortality. 

In  the  first  place,  modern  science  has  in  no  respect 
changed,  for  better  or  worse,  the  ordinary  doctrine  of 
plain  common  sense  touching  the  fact  of  physical  death. 
To  the  unaided  senses  death  is  death,  the  cessation  of  all 
consciousness.  No  one  certainly  is  able  to  see  how  life 
can  continue. 

Moreover,  so  far  as  any  apparent  evidence  goes  for  the 
continued  existence  of  myriads  of  "  souls "  or  "  spirits," 
who  have  passed  through  the  gate  of  death,  this  evidence 
is  of  the  most  meagre  character.  No  one  can  show  that 
such  a  mode  of  continued  life  is  impossible.  But  most 
of  us,  not  being  trained  as  detectives,  are  obliged  to  wait 
for  the  discovery  of  modes  of  communication  that  will 
bridge  the  gulf  that  now  surely  seems  to  divide  "the 
quick"  from  "the  dead."  Meanwhile  the  general  style 
of  the  alleged  messages  from  the  spirit-world  is  not  such 
as  to  make  continued  existence  there  seem  precious  or 
desirable  by  comparison  with  the  best  actual  values  of 
life  in  this  world.  It  is  pathetic  to  suppose  the  wisest 
and  best  among  "the  mighty  dead"  are  so  helplessly  balked 
in  their  desires  to  reach  their  earthly  friends  as  at  the  most 
only  to  convey  to  them  dreary  platitudes  and  trivialities, 
—  the  mere  echoes  of  what  we  have  already  heard. 

It  might  be  said  that  one  tremendous  event  in  human 
history  —  the  resurrection  of  Jesus  —  ought  to  set  aside 
all  question.  It  is  a  striking  fact  that  during  the  ages 
when  few  perhaps  doubted  the  story  of  the  resurrection, 
the  fear  of  death  weighed  on  men's  minds  as  at  no  other 
period.     Few  out  of  millions  seem  really  to  have  taken 


4  THE  HOPE  OF  IMMORTALITY 

pleasure  in  the  hope  of  immortality.  The  time  has  now 
come  when  a  man,  even  though  he  be  a  member  of  a 
Christian  church,  wants  more  than  the  tradition  of  an 
event  far  away  in  time  and  space,  which  itself  needs  to 
be  demonstrated.  Men  feel  as  an  old  minister  in  Boston 
once  remarked  to  a  friend,  "I  wish  as  long  as  I  live  to 
cling  to  the  belief  in  the  resurrection  of  Jesus,  but  I  do 
not  see  how  the  next  generation  can  do  this."  And  they 
probably  add,  as  this  minister  did,  "I  am  very  thankful 
that  my  hope  in  immortality  does  not  depend  upon  the 
resurrection."  It  is  at  least  highly  significant  that  when 
a  notable  leader  in  a  great  evangelical  church,  Dr.  George 
A.  Gordon,  presents  his  best  thought  in  his  book,  "The 
Witness  to  Immortality,"  he  takes  pains  to  establish  the 
theistic  faith  by  philosophy,  before  he  adduces  his  reasons 
for  believing  in  the  resurrection  of  Jesus.  Neither  is  it 
common  for  the  professors  in  theological  schools  to  make 
immortality  stand  or  fall  upon  the  testimony  of  the  men 
and  women  who  are  reputed  in  the  Gospels  to  have  seen 
Jesus  after  his  death.  For  throughout  history  too  many 
marvellous  stories  of  like  events  have  been  told  to  per- 
mit us  to  rest  any  precious  conviction  upon  such  testi- 
mony. At  any  rate,  whether  we  like  it  or  not,  we  must 
concede  that  this  is  the  habitual  attitude  of  the  modern 
mind.  To  state  it  in  positive  terms,  we  are  convinced 
that  the  only  sure  ground  for  the  hope  of  immortality 
must  be  in  the  fact  that  we  are  in  some  true  sense  im- 
mortal by  nature.  For  unless  we  thus  possess  immortal- 
ity, no  miracle  could  demonstrate  this  fact. 

Again,  we  admit  that  no  one  can  see  how  the  transition 
can  be  made  into  any  other  life  than  this  which  we  here 
know  —  a  life  involved  at  every  breath  and  thought  with 
the  senses   and  physical  conditions.     This   element  of 


THE  HOPE  OF  IMMORTALITY  5 

utter  mystery  is  already  contained  in  the  present  life. 
Who  knows  at  all  how  it  is  enabled  to  proceed?  Who 
knows  even  what  the  senses  are  of  which  we  lightly  speak  ? 
Who  in  this  era  of  astounding  transition  regarding  all 
physical  theory  can  draw  a  line  between  matter  and  mind, 
or  even  say  that  the  most  solid  material  is  not  in  reality 
as  subtle,  elusive,  and  invisible  as  thought  is,  or  will,  or 
spirit  ?  Who  shall  say  that  spirit  is  not  the  more  com- 
prehensive word,  rather  than  matter  or  physics  ?  Every- 
thing goes  to  show  this  as  likely.  The  question  of  the 
"how,"  pushed  far  enough,  would  seem  no  more  to 
threaten  the  splendid  possibilities  of  an  immortal  life 
than  it  threatens  to  destroy  the  actuality  of  our  present 
existence. 

We  must  add  that  we  frankly  call  immortality  a  hope. 
This  is  what  it  has  usually  been,  and  what  it  is  quite 
possible  that  it  always  must  remain.  From  its  nature 
it  must  be  a  hope.  So  far  as  it  lies  in  the  future  it  is 
beyond  our  sight.  If  it  means  little,  —  the  playing  of 
harps  and  pianos  and  endless  gossip,  —  we  might  be  told 
by  one  of  its  messengers  what  it  is  like.  But  the  more 
it  means,  the  less  could  any  one  —  even  God  himself  — 
tell  us  in  advance  what  or  how  it  may  be.  In  this  re- 
spect it  would  only  follow  the  analogy  of  the  profoundest 
experiences  of  the  present  life.  Who  could  have  made 
known  to  us  beforehand  the  mysteries,  and  yet  the  indis- 
putable facts,  of  friendship,  of  fatherhood  or  motherhood, 
of  the  high  joys  of  art  and  poetry  ? 

It  follows,  doubtless,  that  our  minds  may  sway  on  this 
subject,  as  on  other  subjects  of  human  interest,  all  the 
way  from  more  or  less  wonder  and  uncertainty  to  various 
degrees  of  conviction  and  confidence.  Some  may  even 
sway  back  and  forth  from  a  positive  to  a  negative  atti- 


6  THE  HOPE  OF  IMMORTALITY 

tude.  Few  minds,  perhaps,  rest  solidly  either  on  the  side 
of  the  denial  of  immortality,  or  again  on  the  side  of  such 
absolute  belief,  as,  for  example,  Theodore  Parker  and 
Tennyson  were  wont  to  express.  Even  Whittier  seems 
to  have  wavered  in  his  belief.  The  fact  of  such  wavering 
on  the  part  of  many  minds  may  as  well  be  frankly  ad- 
mitted. It  seems  to  be  a  law  governing  our  changing 
moods,  that  when  we  suffer  depression,  our  concern, 
whether  with  or  without  adequate  ground,  touches  the 
subject  that  we  care  most  for.  Even  the  millionnaire 
may  thus  apprehend  that  he  is  coming  to  want. 

Once  more,  it  must  be  confessed  to  be  a  burden  upon 
our  thought  of  immortality  that  there  are  so  many  of  us. 
No  one  now  knows  how  long  the  world  has  been  the 
habitation  of  man,  but  the  increasing  succession  of  the 
generations  of  human  beings  of  all  ages  and  degrees  of 
intelligence,  from  the  level  of  animals  upward,  quite 
baffles  our  imagination.  And  yet  tremendous  as  is  the 
burden  of  our  thought,  the  fundamental  weight  of  the 
mystery  consists  in  the  fact  which  we  all  admit ;  namely, 
this  vast  procession  of  toiling,  suffering,  aspiring  human 
lives.  We  have  not  only  the  question,  What  will  become 
of  them?  but  the  question,  Why  are  they  here  on  this 
vast  march  of  life  at  all? 

Let  me  pass  on  to  present  as  rapidly  as  possible  the 
great  sweep  of  the  reasons  that  forever,  and  always  more 
and  more  powerfully,  impel  the  mind  to  the  hope  of 
immortality. 

Eirst,  I  am  impressed  with  the  fact  that  man's  life  not 
only  belongs  to  the  realm  of  the  senses  and  what  we  call 
material  things,  but  it  belongs  essentially,  in  respect  to 
all  that  most  concerns  us  as  human,  to  the  invisible  realm 


THE  HOPE  OF  IMMORTALITY  7 

of  thought  or  spirit.  Whatever  we  name  this  realm  of 
being,  even  if  we  shy  at  such  a  makeshift  word  as  "  spirit" 
to  describe  it,  the  fact  faces  us  that  we  are  men,  not 
merely  by  virtue  of  the  circulation  of  blood  in  our  veins, 
but  by  virtue  of  feelings,  ideas,  aspirations,  convictions, 
states  of  consciousness,  which  cannot  be  weighed  or  meas- 
ured, but  which  are  at  least  as  real  as  anything  that  we 
can  see  or  touch.  We  play  with  numbers,  we  poetize, 
we  behold  visions  of  beauty,  we  love  and  we  forgive,  we 
dream  of  human  welfare  to  be  worked  out  centuries  be- 
yond our  time;  we  philosophize  over  vast  schemes  of 
optimism  or  pessimism.  This  is  simply  to  say  that  we 
inhabit  an  ideal  or  spiritual  realm. 

We  need  not  now  enter  into  the  question  of  what 
this  realm  of  spirit  is.  We  need  not  insist  that  there  is 
any  division  between  it  and  the  realm  where  visible 
"  things  "  appear  and  animals  breathe  and  move.  Grant, 
if  you  choose,  that  some  profound  underlying  substance 
makes  the  realm  of  spirit  one  with  the  realm  of  matter. 
We  only  say  that  the  realm  of  thought  and  spirit  exists. 
You  cannot  live  a  human  life  and  ignore  it.  Its  facts 
are  at  least  as  real  as  any  facts  are.  That  they  cannot 
be  measured  by  the  instruments  of  the  laboratory  does 
not  touch  their  validity.  We  know  that  we  love  our 
children,  when  we  cannot  even  see  their  faces,  much 
less  see  the  motion  of  our  love.  The  idea  or  hope  of 
immortality  obviously  belongs  in  this  realm  of  man's 
life.  Whatever  you  think  of  it,  it  is  on  this  range  and 
not  on  the  range  of  food  values  that  we  have  to  discuss  it. 

Next,  it  occurs  to  us  that  the  presence  and  prevalence 
of  the  idea  of  immortality  in  such  a  world  as  this  is  a 
wonderful  thing.     It  is  wonderful  if  the  spiritual  inter- 


8  THE  HOPE  OF  IMMORTALITY 

pretation  of  the  universe  is  true.  But  it  is  also  wonder- 
ful, if  this  is  only  a  material  world  and  the  idea  of  im- 
mortality has  not  a  shred  of  reality  behind  it.  I  am 
aware  of  the  nature  of  the  hints  and  suggestions  through 
which  students  of  the  childhood  of  the  race  tell  us  that 
this  idea  may  have  grown  up.  Grant  all  that  they  say. 
The  idea  in  itself  is  none  the  less  magnificent  and  won- 
derful. Suppose  it  to  have  been  born  on  the  side  of 
man's  senses  and  out  of  material  environment.  The 
wonder  is  that  it  found  a  sort  of  soil  in  man's  mind  to 
grow  in  and  to  become  what  it  is  now  at  its  highest,  —  a 
majestic  and  daring  hope,  free  of  selfishness,  noble  and 
ennobling,  setting  aside  all  bounds  of  space  and  time.  This 
is  a  most  extraordinary  product  to  come  out  of  the  mere 
play  of  animal  tissue!  You  can  no  more  explain  it  in 
this  blundering  way  than  you  can  explain  your  convic- 
tion of  a  proposition  in  geometry  or  any  other  profound 
fact  of  consciousness  by  the  motion  of  particles  in  your 
brain.  The  movement  of  the  particles,  whatever  it  may 
be,  is  subordinate  to  the  spiritual  reality  which  they  only 
serve  to  image  or  register.  Why  do  atoms  of  matter  so 
move  together  as  to  register  and  impress  thoughts  and 
ideas  ? 

Again,  it  is  worth  while  to  pass  over  on  occasion  to  the 
side  of  absolute  scepticism,  and  to  look  over  the  precipice 
which,  in  the  denial  of  the  hope  of  immortality,  now  awaits 
the  mind.  The  mind  is  not  between  a  difficult  belief 
and  an  easy  doubt.  The  doubt  is  itself  gigantic.  Can 
we  believe  that  the  march  of  all  the  generations  of  man- 
kind has  been  the  way  of  death  only  ?  Can  we  believe 
that  the  noblest  and  holiest,  the  grand  men  of  genius, 
the  leaders  and  helpers  of  mankind,  have  perished  like 


THE  HOPE  OF  IMMORTALITY  9 

so  many  cattle?  Then  we  must  translate  all  life  into 
the  terms  of  final  death.  "  The  Choir  Invisible, "  and 
everything  else,  disappears  and  "  leaves  not  a  wrack  be- 
hind." The  more  we  contemplate  this  negative  interpre- 
tation of  the  universe,  the  more  tremendous  is  the  strain 
on  our  intelligence.  Scepticism  becomes  at  least  as  diffi- 
cult as  faith  seemed  to  be. 

The  fact  is,  this  is  a  world  of  values  with  all  sorts  of 
gradations  upward.  The  more  we  investigate  and  pon- 
der, the  more  clearly  these  values  emerge  and  indeed  be- 
come necessary  to  thought.  It  is  a  workable  theory  of 
the  world  that  its  chief  use,  and  happiness,  and  aim,  so  far 
as  man  is  concerned,  consists  in  learning  values  and  know- 
ing how  to  direct  them.  The  child  or  the  savage  plays 
with  counters  and  beads.  Presently  he  learns  the  uses 
of  all  sorts  of  tools  and  building  materials.  Why  does  he 
build  and  learn  to  toil  ?  His  eyes  are  now  toward  the 
meaning  of  home  and  citizenship,  of  friendship  and  love, 
of  justice,  mercy,  and  humanity.  The  happiness  of  a 
Franklin,  for  instance,  rises  from  indulgence  in  sensual 
things  to  a  quite  new  value  of  happiness;  namely,  the  de- 
sire to  do  good,  that  sets  all  sensual  things  under  his 
feet.  There  is  a  limit  to  the  lower  kind  of  values.  You 
can  buy  them  off  with  other  values  of  their  own  kind,  or 
you  can  exhaust  them.  There  is  really  no  limit  to  the 
values  that  appear  in  the  realm  of  the  spirit.  You  can- 
not buy  a  mother's  love  or  a  patriot's  devotion.  You  can- 
not exhaust  the  justice  in  a  community  by  overdrafts. 
There  is  doubtless  what  must  be  called,  for  want  of  any 
better  term,  an  "  infinite  "  element  in  the  higher  ranges 
of  values,  as  if  gold  and  jewels  were  but  figures  and  im- 
ages to  set  these  nobler  values  forth.     It  is  the  mark  of 


10  THE  HOPE  OF  1MMOBTAL1TY 

manhood  or  intelligence,  not  to  doubt  this,  but  rather  to 
recognize  it. 

The  idea  of  immortality  is  an  assertion  of  the  inde- 
structible worth  of  the  values  that  characterize  humanity 
at  its  best.  The  lower  values,  even  force  and  motion  and 
the  atoms  of  matter,  appear  to  persist,  even  while  they 
change  their  forms.  At  any  rate,  they  effect  something 
in  exact  proportion  to  their  bigness.  They  all  make  the 
way  and  lead  up  to  the  fruitage  of  the  universe  in  its 
high  values  of  truth,  wisdom,  justice,  and  good  will.  To 
affirm  "  immortality "  is  simply  to  say  that  in  a  world 
where  other  and  lower  values  all  accomplish  something, 
and  pass  on  and  up  in  the  trend  of  their  action,  where 
even  a  grain  of  sand  on  the  seashore  has  its  place  and 
does  not  exist  for  naught,  where  the  spring  flower  has  its 
chance  to  die  in  order  to  live  again  in  the  form  of  fruit 
at  the  harvest,  the  greatest  of  all  values,  to  which  the 
others  are  mere  counters,  must  likewise  go  on  in  their 
proper  sphere  and  not  come  to  naught.  My  mind,  as  it 
takes  the  path  of  least  resistance,  is  forced  to  take  this 
track  in  its  thought.  What  hopeless  confusion  of  all 
that  we  know  about  values  it  would  be,  if  we  had  to  think 
that  after  a  few  aeons,  while  the  frozen  earth  still  kept 
every  atom  intact  and  registered  in  its  material  every 
impact  of  force,  all  the  high  values  that  had  made  it 
once  worth  while  to  study  its  elements  and  its  forces  —  the 
humane  and  spiritual  values  that  men  had  been  working  out 
with  their  toil,  their  tears,  their  blood,  had  utterly  vanished ! 
This  is  to  say  that  all  virtue  and  goodness  have  the 
worth  of  the  pigment  of  a  rose  leaf,  or  the  tint  of  a  sum- 
mer cloud.  Our  intelligence  reacts  from  such  a  doctrine. 
Our  intelligence  then  reacts  toward  the  idea  of  immor- 
tality. 


THE  HOPE  OF  IMMORTALITY  11 

There  is  no  such  thing  as  justice,  or  truth,  or  love,  in 
the  abstract.  All  these  are  the  terms  by  which  we  de- 
scribe persons.  Where  no  persons  are,  there  is  no  con- 
ceivable thought,  or  righteousness,  or  will,  either  good  or 
bad.  Expel  if  you  can  the  idea  of  personality  from  the 
universe,  and  it  is  doubtful  whether  anything  would  be 
left,  for  everything  appears  to  exist  in  some  relation  or 
other  to  conscious  and  intelligent,  that  is  personal,  life. 
What  is  force  that  represents  no  directing  will  ?  What 
is  matter,  except  the  crude  stuff  with  which  intelligence 
shapes  thought  and  expresses  itself  ?  There  is  no  intel- 
ligible attribute  or  quality  in  things,  in  weight  or  color 
or  taste,  except  as  some  person  either  uses  or  perceives 
the  attribute.  Its  existence  has  no  significance  without 
an  intelligence  ;  that  is,  a  person  into  whose  consciousness 
it  can  enter.  This  is  to  say,  that  the  visible  world  some- 
how fits  into  the  spiritual  fact  of  personality,  and  the 
universe  breaks  up  with  personality  taken  out  of  it. 

Be  this  as  it  may,  it  is  evident  that  immortality  is 
and  must  be  personal  immortality.  There  is  often  hazi- 
ness of  thought  on  this  point,  as  if  personal  qualities 
might  be  immortal  and  persons  cease  to  be.  What,  for 
example,  would  become  of  "  immortal "  righteousness  in 
a  world  where  no  persons  existed  ?  How  does  any  one 
suppose  an  abstract  immortal  "influence"  would  leap 
out  of  a  dead  planet  to  effect  action  in  some  star  in  the 
system  of  Sirius  ? 

When  we  speak  of  personality,  however,  we  tread  in 
the  realm  of  mystery.  There  is  nothing  so  real  and 
precious.  We  are  as  sure  of  our  personality  as  we  are  of 
any  fact,  but  it  cannot  be  weighed  or  measured,  and  it 
can  hardly  be  described.  It  is  as  mysterious  in  man  as 
it  is  in  the  thought  of  God,  no  more  and  no  less.     It  does 


12  THE  BOPE  OF  IMMORTALITY 

not  consist  in  bodily  form,  but  it  shines  through  the  form 
and  uses  it,  as  God  may  be  conceived  to  shine  through  and 
to  use  the  structure  of  the  universe.  The  most  that  we 
know  about  it  in  man  is  that  it  is  not  complete,  but  is 
something  in  the  process  of  making.  It  is  hardly  observ- 
able at  birth;  it  is  normally  most  evident  at  the  end  of 
man's  career.  It  distinguishes  man  from  all  other  ani- 
mals ;  for  while  they  and  he  begin  alike  and  have  much 
in  common,  and  while  no  one  can  dogmatize  as  to  the 
limits  of  their  possibilities,  man  alone  rises  to  the  pos- 
session of  actual,  though  still  imperfect,  personality. 
Every  little  child  and  the  lowest  savage  possess  at  least 
potentialities  in  this  direction. 

We  know  true  personality  best  in  the  well-developed 
and  highest  types  of  men,  as  we  know  fruit  best  when 
it  is  really  ripe.  There  have  been  men  and  women 
throughout  human  history  who  have  been  true,  gener- 
ous, faithful  unto  death,  fearless,  and  kind.  These  quali- 
ties alone  would  not  perhaps  have  constituted  them 
persons.  What  makes  their  personality  is  a  certain 
unity  in  their  lives,  whereby  all  their  experiences  and 
their  acts  tend  to  become  harmonized,  as  it  were,  and 
to  move  in  one  direction.  If  the  atom  may  be  con- 
sidered as  a  tiny  centre  or  vortex  of  force,  we  can  by 
a  parable  say  that  the  life  of  a  person  is  some  such 
centre  of  spiritual  force.  Let  us  call  this  spiritual  force 
love  or  good  will.  The  noblest  life  is  doubtless  that 
in  which  all  its  powers  and  gifts  —  the  more  of  them, 
the  better  —  move  in  unison  with  the  ruling  good  will. 
Here  is  a  kind  of  life  on  which  you  can  depend ;  it  will 
not  disappoint  you;  it  will  grow  more  noble  and  con- 
sistent; it  will  increase  in  its  momentum;  it  is  a  thing 
of  beauty ;  all  men  love  and  admire  it. 


THE  HOPE  OF  IMMORTALITY  13 

Grant  for  a  moment  that  there  had  been  only  one 
such  life  of  a  refined  and  all-round  person ;  it  would  be 
the  most  wonderful  and  significant  human  fact  that 
men  could  study.  No  investigation  of  physical  things 
could  begin  to  be  so  interesting  and  important  as  the 
evolution  of  a  single  complete,  normal,  and  ripened  life. 
Here  is  one  who  has  the  secret  of  happiness ;  here  is 
promise  of  finding  out  to  what  man  may  attain.  Is 
it  possible  to  develop  other  mature  and  normal  lives, 
such  as  this  was  ?  The  fact  is,  that  we  have  not  only 
a  single  life  worthy  to  be  called  a  true  person ;  we  have 
an  increasing  number  of  such  lives.  We  are  accumu- 
lating the  biographies  of  a  legion  of  noble  personalities. 
There  were  never  so  many  produced  as  in  the  past 
century.  We  begin  to  see  the  human  conditions  upon 
which  their  development  depends.  They  are  largely 
spiritual  conditions.  No  man  can  be  accounted  a  stu- 
dent of  science  who  would  neglect  the  consideration 
of  these  facts  of  personality.  Do  we  not  believe  in  per- 
sonality ?  If  not,  what  do  we  believe  in,  or  what  value 
is  there  in  studying  the  processes  of  life  and  not  coming 
to  the  secret  of  life  itself  ? 

Let  us  consider  a  moment  the  extraordinary  im- 
pression that  the  righteous  or  noble  personality  always 
makes  on  our  minds,  and  this  in  its  fulness,  the  more 
mature  we  are  ourselves.  Take  the  instance  of  Jesus. 
It  is  not  necessary  to  believe  that  his  risen  body  passed 
through  closed  doors  and  appeared  to  his  disciples.  The 
deeper  fact  is  that  his  person  seemed  to  those  who  knew 
him  to  be  above  the  range  of  death.  That  which  con- 
stituted him  a  person  was  not  that  which  died.  We 
are  not  speaking  in  this  instance  of  some  evanescent 
quality,  like  the  perfume  of  a  flower,  but  of  that  which 


14  THE  HOPE  OF  IMMORTALITY 

was  the  heart  and  essence  of  the  man's  being,  his  very 
self.  Such  is  the  nature  of  the  person  at  its  best. 
There  is  no  word  to  call  it  by  that  seems  more  accu- 
rately to  describe  it  than  the  term  "  immortal."  This 
word  alone  carries  the  impression  which  such  a  life 
makes  on  beholders.  We  are  not  saying  that  this 
impression  must  therefore  be  true,  but  we  are  inclined 
to  think  that,  if  all  lives  were  so  complete  as  some 
whom  we  have  heard  of  and  known,  no  one  would  doubt 
that  man  is  "immortal." 

We  tend  to  believe  that  this  is  a  world  of  purpose. 
This  is  only  to  think  that  the  universe  must  have 
significance.  A  purposeless  universe  seems  to  us  con- 
temptible. It  may  be  said  that  our  own  minds  impress 
this  idea  upon  us,  and  the  desire  to  find  purpose  cre- 
ates our  belief.  But  our  minds  are  themselves  the  out- 
growth or  the  children  of  the  universe.  The  nature 
of  intelligence  is  to  seek  order,  significance,  purpose. 
It  cannot  be  irrational  to  trust  this  character  of  our 
minds.  It  would  look  as  if  the  highest  faculty  in  us 
answered  to  the  highest  fact  of  the  universe.  The 
contrary  supposition  certainly  reduces  all  thought  to 
mockery. 

Now,  the  idea  of  immortality  is  almost  the  only  means 
of  expressing  our  thought  of  a  purposeful  universe.  To 
say  that  the  highest  values  do  not  die,  to  say  that  noble 
persons  go  on  in  their  personality,  to  think  that  the  uni- 
verse exists  to  manifest  and  to  develop  this  order  of  life, 
is  to  affirm  a  purpose  worthy  of  the  universe.  Is  there 
any  other  conceivable  purpose  ?  If  so,  what  is  it  ?  For 
a  universe  of  mere  everlasting  succession  of  shifting 
phenomena  is  not  a  rational  universe. 


THE  HOPE  OF  IMMORTALITY  15 

To  believe  in  a  purposeful  universe  is  to  believe  in  the 
integrity  of  the  universe ;  namely,  that  it  is  one,  that  it  is 
orderly,  and  that  it  can  be  depended  upon.  All  science 
really  proceeds  upon  this  faith.  It  is  "  faith,"  for  though 
it  grows  out  of  our  own  experience  and  observation,  we 
cannot  absolutely  demonstrate  it.  All  philosophy  is  the 
attempt  to  think  the  facts  of  the  world  and  of  life  into 
some  harmony  and  unity.  The  very  word  "universe," 
that  we  use  so  glibly,  is  the  expression  of  a  conviction  or 
faith  in  the  integrity  of  the  world.  It  would  be  strange 
and  unreasonable  to  use  this  word  to  sum  up  the  result  of 
our  impressions  of  visible  or  material  things,  and  then, 
just  where  the  interpretations  of  visible  things  touch  the 
life  of  man,  to  stop  saying  "  the  universe,"  and  to  reduce 
the  realm  of  human  or  spiritual  facts  to  chaos.  We  are 
possessed  by  the  intellectual  necessity,  if  we  think  of  a 
universe  at  all,  to  think  of  it  so  throughout.  The  pro- 
found facts  of  human  personality  must  belong  to  the 
integrity  of  the  universe  and  must  be  safeguarded  and 
not  brought  to  confusion  by  its  laws.  This  is  just  what 
we  mean  when  we  utter  our  hope  of  immortality.  There 
is  that  in  the  universe  which  does  not  merely  play  with 
man's  life,  which  does  not  create  its  offspring,  —  Isaiah, 
Jesus,  Dante,  Lincoln,  —  and  then  blindly  dash  them  to 
pieces,  like  foam  on  the  beach.  Such  is  our  instinctive 
idea  of  the  integrity  of  the  world,  without  the  faith  in 
which  both  science  and  philosophy  lose  their  way. 

To  affirm  our  belief  in  the  integrity  of  the  world  is 
also  to  conceive  that  we  are  ourselves  a  part  of  that 
integrity  and  that  we  partake  of  its  nature ;  I  mean,  of 
course,  at  bur  best,  and  as  we  become  more  completely 
persons.     We  differ  herein  by  a  great  height  from  the 


16  THE  HOPE  OF  IMMORTALITY 

merely  animal  life.  We  share  with  the  animals  in  the 
elements  which  compose  our  bodies,  but  we  are  lifted 
above  the  animal  world  in  the  sense  of  the  order,  the 
beauty,  the  intelligence,  the  movement  and  evolution  of 
life,  the  conception  of  purpose  —  all  that  constitutes  ideal, 
intellectual,  or  spiritual  integrity.  We  are  as  much  chil- 
dren of  the  universe  on  this  most  rational  side  of  it,  as  we 
are  its  children  on  the  side  of  our  physical  environment. 
Men  sometimes  ask  whether,  if  man  is  immortal,  he 
must  not  always  have  existed  ?  We  may  well  afford  to 
let  this  mystery  pass.  The  main  fact  is,  that  in  all  that 
makes  man  most  human  he  seems  to  partake,  now  and 
here,  of  that  spiritual  substance  which  conceives,  ordains, 
and  creates  the  world.  He  enters  into  the  vastness,  the 
complexity,  and  the  unity  of  its  scheme  as  if  it  were  a 
drama  unrolled  for  his  understanding  and  his  delight. 
He  and  the  great  Dramatist  must  be  akin.  For  it  is 
not  credible  that  man  made  the  drama  out  of  his  dreams. 
Whence  then  the  dreams  ? 

It  is  a  world  of  startling  possibilities.  The  last 
hundred  years  have  witnessed  an  astonishing  series 
of  developments  on  the  physical  side.  The  most  ex- 
traordinary predictions  have  come  true.  The  most  un- 
expected powers  have  been  developed,  as  if  men  had 
only  to  turn  them  on  and  use  them.  The  most  hidden 
secrets  have  opened  up  to  light.  The  range  of  mystery 
surrounding  man's  sight  has  been  transfigured  from  a 
realm  of  darkness  into  blue  sky,  full  of  stars  and  light. 
The  wonder  is  not  that  man  is  so  little,  but  that  he  is 
so  mighty.  He  inhabits  a  world  of  infinite  possibility. 
There  appears  a  profound  law  of  prayer  underlying  all 
things.     In  less  mystical  terms,  there  tends  to  be  some 


THE  HOPE  OF  IMMORTALITY  17 

provision  to  meet  every  genuine  need  or  desire.  It  is  as 
if  it  were  written :  "  Whatever  is  best,  that  shall  come 
to  pass.     Ask  and  ye  shall  receive." 

Shall  we  trust  this  law  of  our  nature  in  all  outward 
things  and  stop  trusting  it  in  the  one  sphere  where  life 
becomes  significant  and  most  human  ?  The  possibilities 
stretch  in  every  direction.  The  unexpected  happens. 
Geniuses,  intellectual  and  spiritual,  come  to  birth.  New 
ranges  of  character  and  happiness  disclose  themselves. 
New  necessities  are  laid  upon  us. 

It  is  here  that  the  old  parable  of  the  chrysalis  and  the 
butterfly  has  its  significance.  It  is  only  a  parable,  but 
it  happens  beautifully  to  illustrate  the  marvellous  law 
of  surprises  with  which  nature  forever  meets  us.  It  is 
no  objection  to  the  action  of  nature  to  urge  that  we  can- 
not see  how  a  thing  can  be  done.  Again  and  again  the 
thing  is  done  that  we  would  not  have  dared  to  believe 
possible.  It  is  as  if  we  were  traversing  a  winding  road 
among  forests  and  hills  and  streams.  We  come  to  places 
where  the  way  seems  blocked  by  towering  cliffs,  and  we 
march  to  what  seems  the  edge  of  a  chasm.  As  we  go, 
the  way  turns  and  opens  and  shows  great  stretches  of 
view  that  we  never  had  imagined.  This  is  the  nature  of 
the  world  we  live  in.  It  is  no  monotonous  or  machine- 
made  universe.  Its  waters  break  out  of  solid  ice;  at  a 
little  change  of  their  particles  they  leap  out  of  our  sight 
and  become  invisible  and  expanding  power.  "  We  know 
not  what  we  shall  be." 

There  is  no  article  of  more  common  faith  than  that  this 
is  somehow  a  moral  world.  This  is  the  faith  of  the  best 
thinkers.  It  shows  no  sign  of  abatement  because  men 
study  science,     On  the  contrary,  Franklin  and  Darwin 


18  THE  HOPE  OF  IMMORTALITY 

and  Huxley  and  Haeckel  are  always  teaching  us  to  tell 
the  truth  and  be  honest.  Why?  Because  the  world  of 
facts  and  the  world  of  men  and  the  history  of  mankind 
urge  tremendous  lessons  upon  us,  and  all  in  one  direction. 
"Be  righteous,"  they  say.  "Be  modest,  be  truthful,  be 
humane;  show  your  good  will;  do  good  and  not  evil." 
Here  is  the  way  of  life.  These  are  the  very  values  which 
we  saw  enter  into  the  constitution  of  personality,  as  the 
iron  and  lime  enter  into  our  bones.  They  are  in  us  be- 
cause they  are  in  the  structure  of  the  universe.  How 
else  ?  We  made  them  ourselves  no  more  than  we  made 
the  iron,  or  created  electricity,  or  invented  gravitation. 
We  are  what  we  are  because  we  participate  in  the  moral 
structure  which  belongs  to  the  universe  and  which  there- 
fore impresses  itself  upon  us. 

An  appeal  to  justice  is  often  made  in  favor  of  immor- 
tality. Men  have  suffered  innocently  here,  and  they 
ought,  it  is  said,  to  have  compensating  satisfaction  some- 
where else.  But  this  appeal  to  justice  is  in  itself  an 
expression  of  a  faith  in  an  ideal  or  just  universe.  It  im- 
plies a  standard  of  right.  So  far,  then,  this  expectation  of 
justice,  sure  sometime  to  be  made  manifest,  is  an  instinc- 
tive tribute  of  human  nature  to  the  conception  of  an 
ideal  universe.  The  hope  of  immortality  is  wrapped  up 
in  the  thought  of  a  just  world. 

We  have  referred  to  the  idea  of  an  "immortality  of 
influence,"  which  many  good  agnostics  and  high-minded 
men  of  science  are  pleased  to  recommend  for  the  sub- 
stance of  hope.  Of  course  this  is  not  immortality  at  all. 
But  the  fine  thought  behind  it  is  another  tribute  to  a 
fundamental  idealism  that  characterizes  noble  natures. 
Where  is  this  mystery  of  influence  that  we  all  acknowl- 


THE  HOPE  OF  IMMORTALITY  19 

edge  and  believe  in?  It  is  not  in  physics  or  chemistry  or 
climatic  conditions.  It  is  in  the  invisible  realm  of  thought 
and  emotion.  It  makes  men  humane  and  sets  up  new 
currents  of  action  and  will  in  them.  Whoever  talks  of 
influence  expresses  his  faith  in  a  spiritual  universe.  Im- 
mortality is  only  another  of  the  terms  used  by  the  citi- 
zens of  that  universe. 

I  have  said  hardly  a  word  about  God.  We  care  for 
facts  and  not  for  names.  But  the  play  of  a  blind  power, 
the  motion  of  atoms,  or  even  of  an  infinite  multitude  of 
mystic  centres  of  life,  would  not  constitute  a  universe. 
Unity  itself  is  essentially  an  intellectual  or  spiritual 
conception.  Even  to  talk  of  force  comes  near  to  saying 
will.  What  we  discover  in  the  universe  and  in  ourselves 
as  a  part  of  the  universe,  —  power,  intelligence,  order, 
purpose,  integrity,  unity,  and  especially  that  which  we 
find  in  the  most  mature  and  perfect  men,  namely,  right- 
eousness and  good  will,  —  all  this  goes  to  describe  a 
person.  We  mean  a  person  in  no  narrow  and  material 
sense,  but  in  the  only  sense  in  which  personality  can 
exist,  that  is,  in  the  realm  of  thought  and  spirit.  We 
have  facts  or  qualities  which  cannot  possibly  be  detached 
from  one  another,  or  supposed  to  exist  each  by  itself. 
They  are  facts  which  cohere  and  tend  to  make  a  har- 
mony. They  imply  a  kernel  of  reality.  They  are  facts 
which  man  only  discovers,  but  does  not  create.  It  is 
under  the  impress  of  these  facts,  peculiar  to  personality, 
that  in  all  times  men  have  tended  to  some  thought  of 
God.  They  cannot  lightly  shake  off  this  thought.  It 
stands  for  the  only  rational  answer  to  what  would  other- 
wise be  the  blind  enigma  of  existence.  It  is  mysterious 
enough,  but  so  also  is  our  own  existence  as  persons.    It 


20  THE  HOPE  OF  IMMORTALITY 

is  no  harder  to  demonstrate  than  is  the  fact  of  the  person- 
ality or  selfhood  of  our  friends.  All  incongruous  appear- 
ances to  the  contrary,  the  men  around  us  on  the  whole 
impress  us  as  persons  and  not  as  bodies  only.  Their 
faces,  often  impassive  or  expressionless  or  even  forbidding 
to  us,  at  times  flash  out  messages,  thoughts,  and  the  con- 
viction of  a  guiding  purpose,  and  we  believe  in  them,  and 
love  them  accordingly  in  a  manner  that  transcends  the 
physical  senses.  So  we  seem  to  receive  flashes  of  intelli- 
gence, purpose,  good  will,  out  of  the  heart  of  the  universe, 
and  we  believe  in  it  as  the  seat  of  an  infinite  personal  life. 
The  mind  rests  in  this  thought,  as  it  rests  in  no  other 
thought.  The  phenomena  of  the  world  fall  into  order 
under  this  thought  as  they  will  not  otherwise.  Especially 
as  we  live  in  fidelity  to  this  thought,  and  try  the  experi- 
ments which  it  requires  of  us,  we  find  life  at  its  fullest 
degree  of  satisfaction.  This  thought  of  God  seems  to 
match  with  other  things  and  to  bind  them  together  and 
to  complete  the  integrity.  Out  of  this  thought  of  God 
grows  all  religion.  And  man  seems  to  be  constituted  to 
need  some  kind  of  religion. 

It  is  interesting  to  observe  that  in  all  ancient  pantheons, 
there  were  plenty  of  gods,  but  no  real  persons.  The  gods 
were  like  so  many  quarrelling  and  arrogant  men — only 
persons  in  the  making.  The  modern  idea  of  the  immanent 
God  at  last  brings  us  the  conception  of  full  personality. 
Here  is  the  unity  of  power,  thought,  beauty,  and  good- 
ness. Here  is  perfect  good  will,  manifesting  itself  in  a 
divine  purpose  of  bringing  its  creation,  its  children,  to 
the  fulfilment  of  personality  like  its  own.  Take  this  at 
first  as  a  working  theory,  as  one  takes  the  idea  of  gravi- 
tation in  the  physical  realm,  and  see  how  all  problems, 
intellectual  and  practical,  fall  into  lines  of  order. 


THE  HOPE  OF  IMMORTALITY  21 

Pause  here  a  moment  and  see  what  it  means  that  man 
should  ever  have  dared  to  dream  of  such  a  thought  of 
God.  Confuse  all  his  thinking,  shatter  his  faith,  smother 
his  aspirations,  reduce  him  to  the  ashes  of  the  barest  and 
most  narrow  form  of  materialism,  yet  you  can  never  again 
think  meanly  of  the  creature,  risen  out  of  the  dust,  in 
whose  thought  has  been  created  the  beautiful  temple  of 
such  a  faith.  If  he  is  not  a  child  of  God,  then,  as  has 
been  wittily  remarked,  a  God  ought  to  be  created  to  ac- 
count for  the  glorious  audacity  of  this  mere  creature  of  a 
day.  Again,  as  ever  before,  we  find  ourselves  not  be- 
tween a  difficult  belief  and  an  easy  denial,  but  face  to  face 
with  an  incredible  kind  of  denial,  which  baffies  thought 
and  makes  science  and  philosophy  alike  barren. 

The  hope  of  immortality  is  no  doubt  an  outgrowth  or 
consequence  of  the  thought  of  God.  Men  can  never 
prove  it  by  itself  as  an  isolated  dogma.  It  is  a  part  of 
the  integrity  of  religion  itself.  It  is  here  that  we  dis- 
trust any  alleged  material  proof  of  immortality.  If  our 
existence  is  not  involved  in  the  warp  and  woof  of  the 
spiritual  structure  of  the  world,  if  our  nature  is  not  of 
the  immortal  order,  then  while  you  might  prove  that  the 
spirits  of  the  dead  continue  to  exist  in  some  strange 
whispering  gallery  beyond  our  usual  reach,  this  would 
not  be  immortal  life. 

See  now  what  it  means  when  we  venture  in  any  real 
sense  to  say  that  "  we  believe  in  God, "  in  other  words, 
that  purposive  goodness  is  in  the  heart  and  essence  of 
the  universe.  We  are  bound  to  believe  at  a  leap  that  the 
best  possible  will  come  to  pass.  The  intelligence  and  the 
power  of  the  universe  are  pledged  to  work  out  a  destiny 
worthy  of  the  scale  of  the  infinite  thought.     This  is  in- 


22  THE  HOPE  OF  IMMORTALITY 

volved  in  the  integrity  of  the  universe,  and  in  its  rationality. 
The  preposterous  will  not  be  suffered  to  happen.  We  could 
not  respect  a  God,  much  less  worship  or  love  any  being, 
who  brought  ranks  of  creatures  into  existence,  shared  the 
mightiest  thoughts  with  them,  inspired  infinite  hopes  in 
them,  lifted  the  noblest  of  them  into  rapturous  communion 
with  Himself,  continually  unfolded  their  minds  and  hearts 
and  disclosed  the  unexhausted  capacities  of  their  being, 
only  to  drop  them  into  nothingness,  as  children  blow 
their  soap-bubbles  and  drop  them  out  of  the.  window  to 
burst  and  vanish.  Is  this  all  that  God  can  do  ?  We  do 
not  find  this  credible.  The  fact  is,  the  thought  of  im- 
mortality grows  right  out  of  the  heart  of  our  faith  in 
theism.     You  cannot  separate  them  from  each  other. 

A  word  may  naturally  be  expected  here  touching  the 
common  expectation  of  the  world  about  future  rewards 
and  punishments.  Justice  demands,  it  is  thought,  that 
the  unequal  conditions  of  human  life  shall  sometime  be 
equalized.  Without  venturing  to  claim  so  much  as  this, 
without  daring  to  assail  the  moral  order  as  unjust  even 
in  this  life,  insisting  that  except  in  a  moral  world  it  is 
meaningless  to  talk  of  justice  or  injustice,  we  are  bound 
to  say  that  human  existence  at  least  points  toward  and 
seems  to  call  for  some  adequate  fulfilment.  We  see  in 
each  life  the  beginnings  of  the  making  of  a  person ;  we 
interpret  even  failures  and  crimes  into  the  terms  of  moral 
discipline ;  we  look  for  an  outcome  worthy  of  the  cost 
and  pain.  No  outcome  except  the  final  winning  of  per- 
sonality satisfies  our  minds.  We  ask  for  no  childish 
system  of  rewards ;  we  do  want,  by  a  deep  law  of  our  be- 
ing, to  be  of  some  use  in  the  universe.  The  only  way  to 
be  of  use  is  through  the  growth  of  our  personality.     But 


THE  HOPE  OF  1MM0UTAL1TY  23 

the  life  of  this  world  is  not  enough  to  fulfil  our  personal- 
ity —  a  name  to  describe  a  sort  of  infinite  growth. 

The  hope  of  immortality  is  not  a  mere  subject  of 
thought ;  it  has  to  do  with  a  man's  power  and  essential 
well-being.  We  ask  what  the  factors  are  that  constitute 
a  normal  or  healthy  life,  or,  in  other  words,  what  makes  a 
life  most  efficient  and  happy  ?  One  of  these  factors  clearly 
is  a  righteous  purpose ;  another  is  good  will ;  the  element 
of  hope  is  another.  A  man  may  live  without  hope,  but  he 
can  never  be  at  his  best  so.  Take  away  all  hope  and 
you  have  diminished  his  life  power. 

May  not  the  man,  however,  have  hope  in  his  heart  and 
yet  not  in  any  sense  think  of  immortality?  Doubtless, 
indeed,  many  persons  find  hope  in  the  notion  of  a  post- 
humous influence,  or  in  a  dream  of  coming  fame,  as  chil- 
dren in  a  beleaguered  and  doomed  city  might  think  of 
to-morrow's  play.  My  point  is  that  hope,  while  it  may 
live  in  a  vague  way  without  any  definite  object,  tends  to 
die  at  the  roots  with  the  denial  of  immortality.  This 
kind  of  denial,  if  outright,  becomes,  the  more  one  considers 
it,  a  fatal  limitation.  The  larger  a  man's  nature,  the 
more  you  have  hurt  him  the  moment  you  have  cut  off 
all  sky  view,  as  it  were,  from  his  sight  and  shut  his  soul 
within  finite  walls.  Suffer  him  a  bare  window-pane 
through  which  a  star  may  shine,  and  his  soul  will  live. 
Deny  him  all  rays  of  the  infinite  possibilities,  and  the 
man  will  never  be  the  same  in  moral  or  spiritual  health. 
We  know  this  by  experience,  having  made  experiments 
with  ourselves  and  having  swayed  at  times  from  the 
mood  of  hope  to  the  mood  of  utter  doubt.  It  was  as  if 
the  spiritual  temperature  had  gone  down  toward  the  line 
of  death. 


24  THE  HOPE  OF  IMMORTALITY 

The  fact  that  the  hope  of  immortality  quickens  the  flow 
of  all  our  interests  and  makes  life  seem  worth  while,  the 
fact  that  the  man  with  this  hope  in  his  heart  is  more 
alive  and  effective,  and  that  the  denial  of  the  great  hope 
lowers  the  moral  temperature,  does  not  demonstrate  im- 
mortality. But  the  fact  is  very  significant.  So  far  as 
we  believe  in  a  universe,  here  is  one  of  the  harmonies 
that  go  to  constitute  it.  So  far  as  we  believe  in  the 
intellectual  integrity  of  the  world,  here  is  another  point 
out  of  many,  where  it  is  really  easier  to  believe  that 
nature  is  true  in  stirring  hopes  in  us  and  making  them 
essential  to  our  best  life,  than  that  she  is  playing  false 
with  us.  Do  not  the  biologists  tell  us  to  trust  in  what- 
ever makes  life  richer  or  more  effective? 

This  factor  of  hope  is  specially  bound  up  with  our  social 
and  moral  activity.  Granted  the  hope  of  immortality,  we 
have  a  different  kind  of  world  from  that  world  from  which 
hope  is  closed.  It  is  as  different  as  a  voyage  to  a  port  on 
a  splendid  ship  is  different  from  floating  on  a  loose  raft 
in  mid  ocean.  This  is  not  to  deny  that  heroism  might  be 
shown  on  the  raft,  for  example,  by  dropping  off  the  raft 
to  give  more  room  and  food  for  the  survivors.  But  no 
one  would  exert  himself  very  much  to  propel  the  hopeless 
raft,  unless  a  ship  appeared  on  the  horizon.  So  while 
we  might  and  would  maintain  the  kind  of  negative  moral- 
ity which  consists  in  doing  no  injury  to  our  neighbors, 
unless  in  an  atmosphere  of  hope  we  should  lack  the  virile 
and  positive  moral  earnestness  which  urges  men  to  ardu- 
ous and  costly  efforts  for  liberty,  for  democracy,  for  new 
standards  of  humanity.  We  do  not  need  to  say  "  Let  us 
eat  and  drink  for  to-morrow  we  die."  If  we  are  noble,  we 
can  never  say  this.     But  the  very  word  "  noble  w  appeals 


THE  HOPE  OF  IMMORTALITY  25 

to  the  thought  of  the  sacredness  and  significance  of  human 
life,  to  the  idea  of  spiritual  values,  to  the  hope  of  human 
progress.  To  deny  immortality  is  to  deny  the  very  values 
to  the  sense  of  which  all  heroism  appeals.  Who  could 
feel  the  slightest  enthusiasm  in  efforts  to  crowd  the  land 
with  millions  of  people,  all  furnished  with  model  houses 
and  a  living  wage,  but  believing  nothing  and  hoping 
nothing  beyond  their  brief  span  of  years,  more  than  the 
comfortable  cattle  on  which  they  fed  ?  Better,  we  say, 
to  have  been  thrown  to  the  lions  in  the  Coliseum,  better 
to  have  marched  to  death  with  Joan  of  Arc,  better  to 
have  been  mobbed  with  Garrison  or  Lovejoy,  than  to  live 
in  a  world  where  the  eternal  visions  had  perished.  But 
when  we  say  this,  we  go  over  to  that  side  where  hope 
springs  immortal  again  and  will  not  die. 

This  is  to  say  that  all  the  magnificent  words  which 
make  literature,  and  ring  through  literature  and  poetry 
like  battle-cries  to  rally  men  to  their  highest  modes  of 
action, — justice,  truth,  virtue,  heroism,  the  good,  the  best, 
—  such  words,  bespeaking  man's  spiritual  nature,  group 
themselves  with  the  words  "hope"  and  "immortality." 
They  stand  or  fall  together.  Eaise  your  estimate  of  one 
of  these  words,  and  you  unconsciously  raise  your  estimate 
of  all.  Depreciate  any  one  of  them,  and  you  depreciate 
all  alike.  Set  a  price  or  a  limit  upon  the  worth  of  virtue 
and  you  have  limited  your  vision  of  all  things  hoped  for. 
Set  a  finite  limit  upon  hope,  and  you  have  set  the  same 
finite  limit  upon  virtue  or  truth.  You  have  even  depreci- 
ated also  the  value  of  logic  and  reason. 

We  may  think  of  three  departments  that  make  the 
unity  of  life,  —  thought,  feeling,  and  conduct  or  practice. 


26  THE  HOPE  OF  IMMORTALITY 

There  is  no  subject  which  does  not  fall  under  these  three 
dimensions.  There  is  no  subject  which  we  really  under- 
stand unless  we  know  it  in  each  of  these  three  aspects. 
Even  with  the  study  of  mathematics,  goes  the  natural 
sense  of  admiration  at  its  beautiful  exactness  and  its 
infinite  ranges,  as  well  as  an  impulse  to  experiment  in 
the  handling  of  concrete  numbers  and  forms.  The  hope 
of  immortality,  likewise,  is  not  a  mere  mode  of  feeling  any 
more  than  it  is  a  startling  subject  of  intellectual  curios- 
ity ;  it  also  touches  the  practical  life.  Each  man  has  his 
choice,  either  to  live  as  if  the  hope  of  immortality  were 
a  delusion,  or  as  if  it  were  valid.  Here  are  two  different 
modes  of  conduct.  The  same  man  with  this  hope  veri- 
tably added  to  his  possessions  is  a  different  man  in  temper 
and  behavior  from  the  man  he  would  be  with  this  hope 
subtracted  from  his  being.  See  how  much  this  means. 
Let  us  state  our  argument  in  the  following  form :  — 

It  is  generally  agreed  that  no  physicist  has  demon- 
strated or  can  possibly  demonstrate  the  denial  of  immor- 
tality. He  can  no  more  deny  than  he  can  demonstrate. 
On  the  other  hand,  every  one  must  admit  that  on  the 
side  of  man's  essential  humanity,  there  are  a  whole 
series  of  striking  considerations  which  have  always 
suggested  some  profound  fact  underlying  the  thought 
of  immortality.  There  is  therefore  plenty  of  room 
to  hope.  To  say  the  least,  it  is  as  intelligent  to 
hope  as  to  deny.  We  may  then  legitimately  make  ex- 
periments with  ourselves  and  watch  their  outcome.  We 
can  take  the  idea  of  immortality  as  a  working  theory,  as 
we  may  and  often  do  take  theism.  We  may  live  a  day, 
or  a  month,  or  a  year,  on  the  basis  of  this  theory,  and  act 
accordingly.  We  act  thus  as  the  children  of  eternity. 
We  treat  and  respect  ourselves,  we  treat  and  respect 


THE  HOPE  OF  IMMORTALITY  27 

other  men  as  beings  of  an  immortal  nature.  All  mean- 
ness, injustice,  selfishness,  is  straightway  ruled  out  of  our 
lives.  Anxieties  and  fears  cease  for  the  man  who  con- 
ceives of  himself  as  upon  an  immortal  course.  We  have 
immediately  lighted  upon  a  great  secret  of  the  happy 
life.  No  man  ever  truly  made  the  sort  of  practical  ex- 
periment in  conduct  that  befits  the  hope  of  immortality 
without  a  distinct  lift  in  the  range  of  his  being.  Nei- 
ther does  he  in  this  kind  of  experiment  shut  his  eyes  to, 
much  less  deny,  a  single  known  fact.  He  simply  puts 
his  emphasis  upon  the  facts  that  make  him  a  man,  rather 
than  upon  the  facts  that  constitute  his  body. 

We  are  here  probably  using  the  same  kind  of  reason- 
ing which  Professor  William  James  applies  under  the 
somewhat  obscure  name  of  "  pragmatism."  Dr.  Washing- 
ton Gladden  calls  it  "  The  Practice  of  Immortality."  We 
discover  that  a  man  cannot  possibly  behave  too  nobly. 
The  nearer  his  conduct  becomes  to  that  of  an  immortal 
being,  the  better  it  is  for  him  in  heart,  mind,  body,  and 
all.  He  is  thus  most  closely  a  complete  man  and  at  the 
height  of  his  personality. 

Now,  we  have  no  other  test  of  truth  than  that  it  is 
whatever  fits  or  makes  harmony,  or,  more  plainly,  works 
well.  We  tend  to  believe  in  a  thing  if,  without  fatal 
drawbacks,  it  is  good  for  use.  We  believe  in  most  human 
propositions  on  this  basis.  We  believe,  for  example,  in 
the  monogamous  family,  in  popular  education,  or  in  the 
democratic  theory  of  government.  We  follow  a  good  clew 
as  far  as  it  will  carry  us.  So  in  practical  conduct,  we 
follow  the  hope  of  immortality.  It  not  only  makes  the 
harmony  or  unity  which  we  need  in  our  thinking,  but, 
better  yet,  it  fits  into  practice  at  once  and  goes  to  make 
life  effective  and  whole. 


28  THE  HOPE  OF  IMMORTALITY 

Professor  James  has  written  on  "  The  Will  to  Believe." 
We  suspect  that  these  words  and  the  form  of  his  argument 
must  carry  a  prejudice  to  many  minds.  We  scorn  to  be- 
lieve merely  by  force  of  will.  We  will  not  consent  to 
believe  or  to  hope,  unless  for  good  reason.  We  will  not 
believe  a  thing  merely  because  it  is  pleasant.  But  we 
purpose  none  the  less  to  be  good  investigators.  We  are 
quite  willing  therefore  to  take  the  attitude  of  hope  —  as 
legitimate  an  attitude  as  that  of  doubt ;  we  take  it,  not  by 
sheer  force  of  will,  but  so  far  as  grand  spiritual  considera- 
tions and  humane  sympathies  naturally  urge  us  toward 
it.  We  will  watch  what  happens  to  us ;  we  will  be  on  our 
guard  against  false  conclusions.  We  will  not  shut  our- 
selves away  from  the  climate  of  hope  on  the  ground  that 
it  is  a  healthy  climate  to  live  in.  Other  things  being 
equal,  this  is  precisely  the  reason  why  we  should  live  in  it. 

What  if  it  should  prove  that  the  hope  of  immortality 
grows  naturally  out  of  the  practice  of  a  certain  worthy 
kind  of  life,  and  cannot  be  easily  had  except  upon  the 
terms  of  such  a  life?  This  is  to  say  that  immortality 
belongs  to  persons.  This  is  to  say  that  its  quality  begins 
here  and  now  in  so  far  as  men  become  persons.  The  lower 
and  the  less  unified  the  personality,  the  less  reason  has 
any  one  to  be  persuaded  of  immortality.  The  more  we 
care  for  personality,  the  higher  we  conceive  it,  the  more 
we  grow  toward  it,  the  more  instinctively  we  are  pos- 
sessed with  the  thought  that  it  cannot  die. 

This  accounts  for  our  swaying  moods  from  hope  to 
doubt  and  back  again.  This  accounts  for  the  differences 
of  attitude  between  various  men.  Do  we  drop  to  a  vul- 
gar mood  and  think  in  terms  of  bricks  or  money?  In 
our  lowest  moods  no  argument  for  immortality   avails 


THE  HOPE  OF  IMMORTALITY  29 

much  with  us.  Do  we  catch  sight  of  some  great  person- 
ality, —  an  Emerson,  a  Channing,  Marcus  Aurelius  ?  Do 
we  see  for  the  moment  what  such  a  personality  is  worth 
beyond  all  visible  treasures?  Then  in  this  our  highest 
mood  whole  ranges  of  vision  move  us  to  hope.  Show  us 
persons  enough,  stir  us  often  enough  to  aspire  to  be 
persons,  and  we  should  habitually  expect  immortality. 
In  other  words,  the  hope  of  immortality  tends  to  be  a 
sort  of  measure  of  our  spiritual  health  and  growth. 

Is  not  this,  again,  what  we  should  expect  in  a  moral 
universe  ?  The  hope  of  immortality  is  not  a  cheap  thing; 
it  is  costly.  It  is  not  an  idea  that  can  be  had  merely  for 
the  reading  of  books  ;  it  cannot  be  demonstrated  in  an 
evening  at  a  lecture  hall  by  "  materializations  " ;  it  cannot 
even  be  had  on  the  strength  of  the  bodily  reappearance 
of  the  best  man  who  ever  lived.  It  depends  upon  char- 
acter and  grows  out  of  character.  It  goes  with  the  daily 
practice  of  immortality.  Otherwise,  it  is  only  at  best  a 
matter  of  temperament,  tradition,  and  hearsay. 

A  very  important  consideration  follows.  All  that  the 
reason  can  do  with  any  problem  touching  conduct  is  to 
give  advice.  The  reason  can  pronounce  that  a  certain 
course  seems  on  the  whole  worth  while  to  entertain  and 
pursue.  Its  advice  is  like  a  permissive  bill  enacted  by  a 
legislature.  Whether  one  takes  such  advice  or  not,  de- 
pends upon  a  distinct  motion  of  the  will.  So  now  with 
the  thought  of  immortality,  the  reason  gives  its  permis- 
sion to  move  in  the  direction  of  a  magnificent  hope.  "  Go 
over,  if  you  will, "  says  the  reason,  "  to  the  side  of  the  hope, 
and  let  the  hope  sway  you.  Do  not  fear  any  longer  to 
let  yourselves  go."  Many  persons  need  to  take  this  coun- 
sel to  heart.    The  reason  has  done  all  that  it  can.    It 


30  THE  HOPE  OF  IMMORTALITY 

unties  their  chains  and  sets  them  free.  The  way  of  the 
open  sky  lies  before  them.  Let  them  set  forth,  and  take 
the  good  of  their  hope,  and  see  what  comes  of  it.  Hope, 
like  every  other  normal  function,  grows  by  exercise.  Right 
as  we  were  to  pause  and  refuse  to  move,  while  the  direct- 
ing mind  asked  time  to  consider,  as  soon  as  the  mind  gives 
us  even  as  much  as  the  freedom  of  a  mighty  "  Perhaps  " 
or  "  Suppose, "  we  now  become  wise  in  taking  all  the 
freedom  that  belongs  to  us.  For  we  are  not  creatures  of 
reason  alone,  but  of  heart  and  will  and  life  also. 

We  may  now  fairly  ask  whether  there  is  not  a  certain 
reality  in  the  old-fashioned  idea  of  authority,  namely,  that 
certain  persons  have  been  endowed  with  the  right  to  teach 
their  fellows  the  doctrine  of  immortality  ?  We  answer,  Yes, 
there  are  authorities,  albeit  not  infallible,  touching  every 
subject  of  human  interest.  Thus  we  listen  to  the  testimony 
of  every  good  man  who  speaks  out  of  his  experience  of  the 
facts  of  the  good  life.  We  pass  judgment  on  the  com- 
parative sanity  and  soundness  of  men  who  speak  on  this 
subject,  as  on  every  other  subject.  On  certain  points  we 
find  a  growing  tendency  to  a  consensus  of  experience  and 
opinion.  Such  a  consensus  of  the  noble  and  high-minded 
does  rightly  move  our  minds,  not  to  follow  in  blindness, 
but  to  listen  with  respect. 

Here  is  the  authority  of  such  a  Master  in  the  good  life 
as  Jesus  was.  Did  he  feel  within  himself  the  stirrings 
of  an  immortal  nature  ?  Did  he  have  visions  of  per- 
sonality for  which  this  earthly  life  seemed  a  mere  be- 
ginning? We  are  impressed  that  he  was  a  real  man 
and  spoke  out  of  genuine  experience.  What  if  he  and 
others  saw  more  than  the  average  man  has  yet  seen  ? 
At  our  best,  we  tend  to  see  and  to  say  very  similar 


THE  HOPE  OF  IMMORTALITY  31 

things.  Whatever  any  human  being  has  tried  and  dis- 
covered for  himself  to  be  real,  becomes  authoritative  to 
persuade  us  to  make  trial  of  the  same.  In  this  sense 
there  was  never  so  much  authority  for  the  idea  of  im- 
mortality as  there  is  to-day.  The  world  never  had  ac- 
cess to  so  many  of  the  lives  of  the  wise,  the  noble,  and 
the  true-hearted,  the  men  of  veritable  religion,  as  it  has 
to-day.  With  all  degrees  of  caution  and  assurance  the 
cheering  voices  come  to  us  of  those  who  sing  as  they  go 
with  their  faces  to  the  light.  Those  who  give  this  tes- 
timony are  not  the  selfish,  they  are  not  the  light-minded, 
they  wish  no  mere  gift  of  years ;  they  desire  no  idle 
heaven ;  they  pray  rather  to  be  useful ;  they  have  lived 
the  life  of  good  will,  and  they  trust  that  good  will  is  the 
most  enduring  force  in  the  universe.  They  go  out  into 
the  mystery  as  those  ready  to  do  the  deeds  of  good  will 
forever.  They  approve  themselves  to  us  as  worthy  to  be 
called  citizens  of  the  universe,  for  there  is  no  conceivable 
place  where  they  would  not  be  at  home.  They  seem  to 
us  of  the  nature  of  the  infinite  life  at  the  heart  of  the 
world.  We  do  not  think  that  we  shall  be  misled  in  fol- 
lowing their  lead. 

I  have  no  idea  of  making  a  chain  of  so  many  links  to 
compel  assent.  On  the  contrary,  I  have  simply  tried  to 
set  forth  the  mass  of  considerations  that  always  and  in- 
creasingly urge  my  own  mind,  even  in  its  most  sceptical 
moods,  to  face  toward  the  way  of  hope.  I  have  dealt 
with  facts  at  every  step,  not  indeed  facts  that  can  be 
studied  with  the  help  of  the  microscope,  but  neverthe- 
less the  solid  facts  in  which  human  life  consists.  What 
impresses  me  is  that  these  facts  all  go  together  and  point 
one  way.    They  are  cumulative.     They  belong  to  a  cer- 


32  THE  HOPE  OF  IMMORTALITY 

tain  unity  which  yon  cannot  break  without  doing  vio- 
lence to  every  essential  part  of  the  whole.  The  hope 
of  immortality  arises  out  of  this  unity  of  thought,  feeling, 
and  conduct.  My  conviction  is  that  it  is  here,  because 
it  is  true. 

This  is  really  the  same  kind  of  reasoning  that  leads  us 
to  believe  in  the  wonder  and  mystery  of  a  physical  uni- 
verse. We  do  not  believe  in  this  wonderful  unity  be- 
cause we  can  wholly  demonstrate  it  by  physical  evidence. 
It  is  not  even  an  apparent  unity  to  a  child  or  a  savage. 
It  is  a  unity  which  nature  doubtless  suggests,  but  we 
have  to  admit  that  it  hardly  could  be  at  all  except  for 
the  demand  of  our  minds  to  discover  unity.  Our  faith 
in  a  universe  is  not  merely  the  outgrowth  of  the  observa- 
tion of  outward  phenomena;  it  is  also  a  sort  of  intel- 
lectual or  spiritual  necessity,  without  which  the  mind  is 
baffled  and  stupefied.  So,  too,  we  find  that  the  hope  of 
immortality  belongs  to  that  deeper  unity  of  thought  and 
conception,  of  which  our  interpretation  of  the  outward 
nature  is  merely  an  image. 

Finally,  the^tremendous  question  recurs,  How  can  these 
things  be?  This  is  the  underlying  mystery  in  all  life. 
In  this  world  of  wonderful  and  dramatic  possibilities, 
where  the  facts  are  daily  more  startling  than  any  mira- 
cle, we  not  only  do  not  need  to  know  precisely  how  im- 
mortality may  be,  but  we  suspect  that  we  are  better  off 
with  the  hope  than  we  could  be  with  a  kind  of  knowledge, 
for  which  we  are  not  yet  ready  or  sufficiently  developed. 
As  it  is  well  for  the  child  that  he  cannot  be  told  the 
experiences  of  manhood  and  parenthood,  so  it  is  well  for 
men  generally  to  be  obliged  to  see  the  future  as  we  see 
distant  mountains  in   a  haze  of  cloud-land.     "  Clouds 


THE  HOPE  OF  IMMORTALITY  33 

and  darkness  are  round  about "  them.  It  is  enough  that 
rifts  of  sunlight  are  in  the  clouds  and  the  broad  bases 
of  the  hills  are  there,  whether  we  see  their  summits  or  not. 
Meantime  golden  hours  of  vision  come  to  us  in  this 
present  life,  when  we  are  at  our  best,  and  our  faculties 
work  together  in  harmony.  There  are  times  when 
intelligence  is  full  and  quick,  our  feelings  are  healthy, 
matching  great  thoughts,  and  good  will  possesses  us.  In 
these  best  hours  the  mere  limits  of  space  and  time  seem 
small;  we  appear  to  belong  to  a  divine  universe,  we  are 
admitted  to  share  in  the  universal  thought,  we  feel  the 
unity  of  all  things,  we  are  at  one  through  sympathy  with 
all  who  live,  toil,  suffer,  and  aspire.  We  follow  one  pur- 
pose of  beneficence.  This  is  the  sanest  as  well  as  the 
highest  of  human  experiences.  It  purifies  us,  it  both 
rests  and  inspires  us  for  better  work,  more  conscientious, 
wiser,  more  accurate,  more  disinterested,  more  effectual. 
We  are  in  such  hours  most  truly  ourselves  as  individuals, 
or  persons,  while  we  seem  to  belong  to  the  Universal  Life 
—  the  one  Person  that  constitutes  the  world.  Is  it  not 
this  of  which  Wordsworth  writes  ?  — 

"that  blessed  mood, 
In  which  the  burthen  of  the  mystery, 
In  which  the  heavy  and  the  weary  weight 
Of  all  this  unintelligible  world, 
Is  lightened, — that  serene  and  blessed  mood, 
In  which  the  affections  gently  lead  us  on, — 
Until  the  breath  of  this  corporeal  frame 
And  even  the  motion  of  our  human  blood 
Almost  suspended,  we  are  laid  asleep 
In  body,  and  become  a  living  soul ; 
While  with  an  eye  made  quiet  by  the  power 
Of  harmony,  and  the  deep  power  of  joy, 
We  see  into  the  life  of  things." 


34  THE  HOPE  OF  IMMORTALITY 

Does  any  one  imagine  the  food  which  we  eat  to  be  real, 
and  these  great  experiences  of  life  to  be  less  real? 

Here,  then,  is  a  sort  of  earnest  or  foretaste  of  the  im- 
mortal life.  We  surmise  that  immortality  is  like  this. 
At  our  highest  and  best  we  have  discovered  the  quality 
of  immortality.  We  are  content;  in  view  of  certain 
supreme  experiences  which  life  offers  here  and  now  we 
say,  "All  is  well."  We  cannot  doubt  that  whatever 
comes  will  also  be  well.  This  is  the  faith  of  religion,  grow- 
ing out  of  the  most  impressive  facts.  This  faith  grows 
equally  out  of  the  highest  reaches  of  our  intelligence. 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 
BERKELEY 


Return  to  desk  from  which  borrowed. 
This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


pm^e  CO 

N0Vi4l9Btt 


REC'D  UD 

APR  18  ^ 

LD  21-100ra-9,'47(A5702sl6)476 


14May'62JM 
REQ'D  LD 

MAY  8    1962 

LIBRARY  USE 

MAY  4  196c 


C'Dt-O 


MA! 


©Eft» 


YB  28255 


304124 


^4 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


